Automatix

Automatix Inc., founded in January 1980, was the first company to market industrial robots with built-in machine vision. Its founders were Victor Scheinman, inventor of the Stanford arm; Phillippe Villers, Michael Cronin, and Arnold Reinhold of Computervision; Jake Dias and Dan Nigro of Data General; Gordon VanderBrug, of NBS and Norman Wittels of Clark University.

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Automatix mostly used robot mechanisms imported from Hitachi at first and later from Yaskawa and KUKA. It did design and manufacture a Cartesian robot called the AID-600. The 600 was intended for use in precision assembly but was adapted for welding use, particularly Tungsten inert gas welding (TIG), which demands high accuracy and immunity from the intense electromagnetic interference that the TIG process creates. Automatix was the first company to market a vision-guided welding robot called Seamtracker. Structured laser light and monochromatic filters were used to allow an image to be seen in the presence of the welding arc. Another concept, invented by Mr. Scheinman, was RobotWorld, a system of cooperating small modules suspended from a 2-D linear motor. The product line was later sold to Yaskawa. [http://www.motoman.com/products/worlds/robotworld.htm]

Automatix raised large amounts of venture capital, and went public in 1983, but was not profitable until the early 1990s. In 1994, Automatix merged with another machine vision company, Itran Corp., to form Acuity Imaging, Inc. Acuity was acquired by Robotics Vision Systems Inc. (RVSI) in September 1995. As of 2004, RVSI still supported the evolved Automatix machine vision package under the PowerVision brand.

In August 2005 RVSI itself was acquired by Siemens Energy and Automation who by mid-2008 are marketing the RVSI Visionscape and Hawkeye products alongside their own SIMATIC brand, some of which are re-branded DVT/Cognex smart cameras.

References

* "Computervision vs. Automatix (A) & (B)", Harvard Business School case studies 384-142 & 384-143
*US patent|4841762 Symmetry calibration method for multi-configuration robots
*US patent|4597081 Encoder interface with error detection and method therefor
*US patent|4577344 Vision system
*US patent|4497996 Arc welding system with vision
*US patent|4413180 Method and apparatus for image acquisition utilizing a hollow shaft motor and a concave, cylindrical reflector
*US patent|4409478 Method and apparatus for image acquisition utilizing a concave, cylindrical reflector